Elandan in Spring

Friday, June 30, 2017

Spring at Elandan Gardens

Date published: 2017, June 30
Source material: 2017, April-May

As you may guess by looking at my recent posts (or lack thereof), May and June were busy months for me. Unfortunately, due to weekends packed with multiple field trips for classes, the Puget Sound Spring Show (which I was on the committee for), a little collecting exploration in the Cascades, and a camping trip to Nevada to collect plants for my university's Herbarium, I was not able to make it out to the bonsai garden on the weekends as often as I would have liked and I did not make the time to put to paper the blog post ideas I have been accumulating. Fortunately, I have finished my exams for the school year and it's time to catch up on all things bonsai.
I wanted to begin by sharing my photos of Elandan Gardens in spring so that anyone attracted by these floral views still has time to catch some of the late-bloomers around the garden (Bougainvilleas will flower periodically throughout the year, for example). Dan loves ancient and gnarly trees above all else - this is apparent even how he styled his Azaleas which in full bloom are almost offensively replete with flowers. Dan's passion made the garden into a unique setting to enjoy the changing seasons. Even trees which have gone through the cycle of the seasons a hundred or a thousand times still are willing to expend massive amounts of energy to reproduce - luckily for the sake of our enjoyment.

Dan brought in this giant cedar stump with a crane meant to handle multi-ton rocks. The stump is at least 10 feet in diameter.

Here are some azaleas from the garden to start things off. While I missed some of them in their peak, there definitely some stunners in there. Maybe my timing can be better next year.